Thursday, May 29, 2008

I read an article yesterday about Dunkin Donuts pulling an ad with Rachael Ray where she is wearing what appears to be a shredded kaffiyeh. The ad was pulled due to an article by Fox's right-wing commentator Michelle Malkin in which she stated, "''The kaffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad...'' Speaking of being clueless! I have to respond. Attention is always paid to poor, simple Muslim women who are forced to wear hijab and be beaten by their husbands. (Okay, I'm being facetious because this is clearly not the case.) However, when one visits North Africa and the Middle East, as I have, one of the first things that one notices is that both men and women cover their head (thus the derogatory "raghead" comments). Men often wear either a red or black kaffiyeh to symbolize whether or not they have been on Hajj. It is true that you can often see men wearing kaffiyehs who are militants, but wearing a kaffiyeh is not a sign of militancy. If anything, the ad should have been pulled on the basis that a shredded kaffiyeh is disrespectful to Arab culture because it looks like the shredding of tradition. Absurd, right? Well, so are Malkin's remarks. Hey, I have an idea! Maybe rather than worrying about a Dunkin Donuts commercial, maybe Malkin should concentrate on trying to figure out a good way to get our economy out of the toilet and to bring our troops home from Iraq. She should stick to the things she knows, rather than stereotyping an entire ethnicity based on a piece of clothing. Of course, being on Fox News, the only thing that she probably knows is ignorance so maybe she should bother to educate herself by travelling to the Middle East, or heaven forbid, read a book, rather than insulting us all with her idiocy. After all, the U.S. has bigger problems than donuts and scarves.